Film clips: Windsor the next Telluride?

After receiving a WIFF email today the thought occurred to me that Windsor could be the next Telluride or Sundance. Such has the festival’s gravitas picked-up, like an increasing snowball – and now garnering national recognition – that WIFF is taking on the trappings of the “small festival that could.” International stars increasingly are attending, as are audience members from outside the area with Windsor more and more being seen as a destination festival. Accordingly, says WIFF in the email recapping the past year and most succesful yet, with 186 features and over 300 screenings. “Most importantly, we had people from all over North America visit Windsor to experience film and community at WIFF, affirming our vision of becoming a nationally recognized, industry-leading cultural destination.” 

The Globe and Mail recently did a story about the Toronto’s film festival’s touring series called the Film Circuit, which distributes TIFF films to communities across Canada. Windsor’s fest director was quoted. “We were part of Film Circuit for 18 years and grew with them, learned from them about building relationships with distributors and filmmakers and how it all works, and now we’re here,” says executive director Vincent Georgie of the Windsor International Film Festival. “We then forged our own path forward, but absolutely with a debt due to TIFF.”

I’m in Greece. But before leaving home in Canada I had re-signed with Netflix but to its low budget platform for less than $10/month but which includes commercials. Really no big deal as they are few and far between and don’t last long and are sometimes even interesting. I was able to watch Netflix in England but this cheaper platform isn’t supported in Greece. Different strokes for different countries, I guess.

In England, in Exeter in southwest England, there’s a little idiosyncratic gem of a museum at the city’s university, The Bill Douglas Cinema Museum (photo above). Douglas, now deceased, was a British filmmaker and as importantly a major collector of thousands of pieces of cinema paraphernalia. What’s most intriguing is the display of early 20th century and pre-20th rudimentary moving image machines or contraptions that mimicked motion such as mirrors, peep shows, optical illusions, dioramas and phantasmagoria or modified magic lanterns to project “supernatural” images.